“Dark Girls”
January 14, 2012
First I want to preface and say this synopsis is the author’s opinion and perception of her experience on January 13th, 2012 The Official Dark Girls Movie premiere at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, NY. It will aim to take a bird’s eye view of the night’s event while adding statistical data, offering a holistic and feminist/womanist approach to one of our many systemic and social ills.
Here we go:
On a frigid Friday night, 2 friends and I stood online waiting to purchase tickets for the premiere of a film I was not aware of. As I glanced about me, I saw a hodgepodge of ‘regular’ folks mingling with a string of black movie stars waiting to enter the Landmark Apollo Theater. With the poster shining bright at the entrance, I quickly realized this is open season for a dialogue that is omnipresent and in need of being initiated: Our skin tones! Did you know the skin is considered the LARGEST organ in the Body? Yes, like our heart, our ears, or any other organs, our skin LIVES: It protects us, it feeds us, it purges us of toxins etc. The skin also has its own unit that protects it. One of those networks is called Melanin. Scientific research finds “Melanin is important because it’s the most primitive and universal pigment in living organisms.” Apparently, there are many types of Melanin (neuro-melanin for the brain, and skin melanin).
However, we shall focus on… drum roll… SKIN melanin since the summary is about the film Dark Girls. So, here we have the most primitive living organism that the more of it exists, the more it protects and the more color it produces. As African-descendants, we’ve been traumatized in the worst way imaginable, yet we’re so disconnected that we cannot appreciate the most powerful gift that we received- significant external protection from skin cancer, and other dermatological diseases that plague other races, not to mention a means of survival because it continuously regenerates.
Now! The Film:
The movie starts with a beautiful little girl with dark Alabaster skin and sad eyes sitting on her mommy’s lap answering the documenter’s question about her ‘race’. The girl of no more than 4 or 5 years says defiantly, “I AM NOT BLACK”. Mom who would for sure pass the brown paper bag test looks flabbergasted and clueless as to why her baby girl would make such a statement. Mom goes on to say, she has two [older] sons who are ‘my shade’ and is now realizing with her little girl, the kind of treatment the girl is receiving on the playground and instills in her sons to treat their sister like the princess she is so that the daughter ‘will not go looking for love in all the wrong places’. The film is peppered with male and female experts from the Association of Black Psychologist professing the issues of Internalized Colorism and Racism, stating facts such as 1 in 5 black girls cause injurious harm to themselves trying to lighten their complexion.
Directors/Producers D. Channsin Berry (Urban Winter Entertainment) and Bill Duke (Duke Media) definitely provided the space for us to consider the impact of approximately 300 years of field & house slavery, less than a century of ‘freedom’ from “official” Jim Crow segregation and persecution, to the fight for Civil Rights and finally acknowledgment of our Black Pride with short-lived mottos such as “The darker the berry, the sweeter the juice” etc. Conscious interviewees from modern-day America also poignantly noted the segregation and the system of “divide and conquer” that is used against Black communities today, pitting African-Americans against Afro-Caribbean or Afro-Latinas and especially against Indigenous Africans.
The admittance of Media power sounded loudly in recognizing the local and global effects on our self-esteem (i.e. lack of representation of dark-skinned persons who are heroines, the emphasis of vilifying women of darker skin tone, culminating in a massive consumption of skin-bleaching creams etc.) Our history pre and post slavery was dissected in part to find the root cause of this perpetual traumatizing phenomenon that seems to have a strong hold on our collective and individual psyche. The film seemed to point to a consensus that European colonization and the Middle Passage affected us, but we as a black people are the culprit to our dysfunctional demise and we are accountable to deconstruct these debilitating ideologies.
The Pink Elephant in the Room:
At the end of the film, a 30 minute Q&A session took place. The first question came from the moderator asking Mr. Bill Duke of Duke Media, who co-directed the documentary, what inspired him to bring this to the forefront. Mr. Duke’s response was his own personal experience as a black DARK MAN growing up. My red flag was immediately raised. Clearly black men experience colorism with statistical data showing darker skinned men AND women are pulled over by the police and processed through the judiciary system (incarceration) at higher rates than their light-skinned counterparts. Doing my own research to support this analysis, I came across many other “documentaries” about this issue of light skin vs. dark skin, and was devastated to witness the level of sheer insanity coming from our young black sisters and brothers about skin shade and their perceptions. One statement made by a young sister that saddened me was dark skinned men are considered “Mandingos” in a sexualized way. We also know that dark skinned women still continue to be viewed based on “Auction Block Ideology” as breeding and sexualized objects of property even in this 21st century.
Mr. Duke, having answered the question left me as a black woman OUT of the equation because, I expected to hear from his lips that he was inspired from observing the challenges his dark-skinned mother, sister, or any other FEMALE member of his family faced and sought an attempt to see this from the eyes of a WOMAN with a darker hue. Gender-bias is also a prominent ailment in our community; regardless of skin tone, men within our communities have a different experience than women. Men have privilege and I witnessed it at the Apollo Theater. I can be appreciative of the efforts these two men exerted to bring voice to dark skin girls, but I couldn’t ignore the privileged seat they sat on. So, who gets to tell black women’s stories?
More personal takes:
Not to give away too much about this touring film, I want to offer two thumbs up to the labors of Directors/Producers D. Channsin Berry (Urban Winter Entertainment) and Bill Duke (Duke Media) for starting up a conversation that is necessary in order to collectively heal. However, although it is not lost on me that funding has been challenging for these gentlemen as they confessed this at the Q&A, I give “Dark Girls” ONE solid thumb up despite the fact that I believe the message- on how to go about de-bunking the stigma of colorism from personal selves to nuclear families to the global community- was simplistic . Perhaps if a black woman was invited to co-direct, just maybe we’d find a more in-depth and rounded view on how to heal this stagnant wound. In fact, I was also happy to hear of the directors’ two upcoming films?
1) The Yellow Brick Road– focusing on the obstacles “Light-skinned” sisters face. So far in their research, it is dawning on the directors how these women of lighter shade are traumatized from outsiders ‘questioning’ their ethnicities. I felt a twinge of dismay when Mr. Berry took the microphone and offered with “visual gestures” an analysis of the color spectrum- and I quote with my own visual illustration:
“When you see a dark skin woman, that is it! It STOPS there, we know she’s BLACK. But when you see a light skin woman, we question her ethnicity, bombarding the woman with questions and she reports feeling overwhelmed.” Berry said.
2) What is a Man- not much was given on what this film will be about. I pray they will NOT take a “Michael Baisden/Steve Harvey approach”. So stay tuned!
My last two-cents (I promise!):
With an event such as the touring of “Dark Girls”, it would be amiss not to take this back to our communities and exercise “emotional justice”. It was evident at the Apollo Theater that audience members, women & men of every shade, stepped up to the microphones sounding wounded while testifying their own traumatic stories regarding skin hues. It is time to take the initiative to heal ourselves. So, check out this “Official Movie” when it hits your town because ultimately, Bill Duke wants this movie to inspire and eventually reach the big screen. Then, join us for a day of Catharis because this author wants you to be empowered! -Shameful plug… I know
😉
References:
http://officialdarkgirlsmovie.com/
http://www.sankofa.ch/texts/Melanin.htm
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USASwhipping.htm
http://www.worldstarhiphop.com/videos/video.php?v=wshh06z1I9ZOH0Gw0lei
http://rahrahrah.posterous.com/beyond-the-brown-paper-bag-test-de-constructi
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